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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A THOREAU CALENDAR 



A THOREAU 



CALENDAR 



EDITED BY 



ANNIE RUSSELL MARBLE 




NEW YORK 



THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 



PUBLISHERS 



p^^ 



Copyright, igog 
By Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 



Published, September, 1909 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



Ci. A 24 4;; 6 4 
AUi tt 1909 



PREFATORY NOTE 



THERE are few writings in English literature 
which surpass the pages of Thoreau for unique- 
ness and variety of theme and sententious phrasing. 
As he had a strong, distinctive personality, so his 
literary expressions were original and forceful. 
His books contain many nuggets of study and 
experience on Nature, economics, books, ethics, 
religion, and a score of other topics. Sometimes 
the tone is that of blunt practicality ; in other 
passages, the spiritual or poetic note prevails. It 
has always been difficult to classify Thoreau's 
writings because of their variety of subject and lack 
of coherent plan ; he said frankly, " It is wise to 
write on many themes, that so you may find the 
right and inspiring one." Thoreau is associated 
in memory with the Transcendentalist movement 
of his time and community, and three of the lead- 
ing exponents of this philosophy, in America, were 
his friends and neighbors, — Emerson, Alcott, and 
Ellery Channing. While Thoreau was philosophic 
by nature, he did not invent nor accept any 
definite theory or program of living for mankind 

[ V ] 



in general. He was as pronounced in non- 
conformity as Emerson, and almost as mystical in 
certain moods as Alcott, and he preached the 
" gospel of the simple life " with as much vigorous 
radicalism as any of its advocates have done. He 
studied his own body, mind, and soul, and de- 
termined to live so that he might meet his individ- 
ual needs. He urged no one to follow this special 
method of living, but rather he appealed to every 
reader to find out his own needs and conditions 
and utilize them for self-improvement. His con- 
ception of a noble character included the qualities 
of sincerity, purity, justice, contentment, industry 
tempered by leisure for spiritual refreshment, and a 
constant, loving study of Nature. To a marked 
degree he realized these traits in his mature years. 
Although he was sometimes prejudiced and unin- 
formed on certain phases of life, although he seemed 
to many acquaintances only an egoist of unusual 
type, yet he practiced his own text, " Be resolutely 
and faithfully what you are ; be humbly what you 
aspire to be." 

In selecting these quotations the editor has 
chosen from the books published during Thoreau's 
life or prepared for publication largely in accord 
with his suggestions to family and friends. The 
aim has been to represent the significant aspects 
of his life and teachings. Many longer passages, 
which might reveal more fully his personality, 

2 ? [ vi ] 



JANUARY 



JANUARY FIRST 

IF a man constantly aspires, is he not elevated ? 
Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, 
truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advan- 
tage in them ? that it was a vain endeavor ? 

Letters to Various Persons. 

JANUARY SECOND 

Who shall describe the inexpressible tenderness 
and immortal life of the grim forest, where 
Nature, though it be mid-winter, is ever in her 
spring, where the moss-grown and decaying trees 
are not old, but seem to enjoy a perpetual youth; 
and blissful, innocent Nature, like a serene infant, 
is too happy to make a noise, except by a ic^ 
tinkling, lisping birds and trickling rills ? 

The Maine Woods. 

JANUARY THIRD 

I think that we may safely trust a good deal 
more than we do. We may waive just so much 
care of ourselves as we honestly bestow else- 
where. Nature is as well adapted to our 

[ I ] 



weakness as to our strength. The incessant 
anxiety and strain of some is a well-nigh incur- 
able form of disease. 

IValden. 

JANUARY FOURTH 

Books of natural history make the most cheerful 
winter reading. I read in Audubon with a thrill 
of delight, when the snow covers the ground, of 
the magnolia, and the Florida keys, and their 
warm sea-breezes ; of the fence-rail, and the 
cotton-tree, and the migrations of the rice-bird ; 
of the breaking up of winter in Labrador, and the 
melting of the snow on the forks of the Missouri ; 
and owe an accession of health to these reminis- 
cences of luxuriant Nature. 

Natural History of Massachusetts. 

JANUARY FIFTH 

So is each one's world but a clearing in the 
forest, so much open and inclosed ground. 

A Walk to IVachusett. 

JANUARY SIXTH 

What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, 
contented ? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, 
but our great-grandmother Nature's universal, 
vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has 
kept herself young always, outlived so many old 



Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their 

decaying fatness. 

IValden. 

JANUARY SEVENTH 

Think of the importance of Friendship in the 
education of men. It will make a man honest; 
it will make him a hero ; it will make him a saint. 
It is the state of the just dealing with the just, 
the magnanimous with the magnanimous, the 
sincere with the sincere, man with man. 

A IVeek on the Concord Ri'uer. 

JANUARY EIGHTH 

Say what you have to say, not what you ought. 

Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom 

Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was 

asked if he had anything to say. " Tell the 

tailors," said he, " to remember to make a knot 

in their thread before they take the first stitch." 

His companion's prayer is forgotten. 

IValden. 

JANUARY NINTH 

Nature confounds her summer distinctions at 

this season. The heavens seem to be nearer 

the earth. The elements are less reserved and 

distinct. Water turns to ice, rain to snow. 

The day is but a Scandinavian night. The 

winter is an arctic summer. 

A IVinler Walk. 

[ 3] 



JANUARY TENTH 

There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men, as 
the poet says, and yet as things flow they circu- 
late, and the ebb always balances the flow. All 
streams are but tributary to the ocean, which 
itself does not stream, and the shores are un- 
changed but in longer periods than man can 

measure. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

JANUARY ELEVENTH 

When Winter fringes every bough 

With his fantastic wreath. 
And puts the seal of silence now 

Upon the leaves beneath ; 

When every stream in its pent-house 

Goes gurgling on its way. 
And in his gallery the mouse 

Nibbleth the meadow hay ; 

Methinks the summer still is nigh. 

And lurketh underneath. 

As that same meadow-mouse doth lie 

Snug in that last year's heath. 

A Winter Walk. 

JANUARY TWELFTH 

It is so hard to forget what it is worse than 
useless to remember. 

Anti-Slavery and Reform Papers. 

[4] 



JANUARY THIRTEENTH 

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new 
clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. 
If there is not a new man, how can the new 
clothes be made to fit? If you have any enter- 
prise before you, try it in your old clothes. 

IValden. 



JANUARY FOURTEENTH 

But cowardice is unscientific ; for there cannot be 
a science of ignorance. There may be a science 
of bravery, for that advances ; but a retreat is 
rarely well conducted ; if it is, then is it an 
orderly advance in the face of circumstances. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 



JANUARY FIFTEENTH 

Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, 
if it be necessary eat but one ; instead of a hun- 
dred dishes, five; and reduce other things in 
proportion. Our life is like a German Con- 
federacy, made up of petty states, with its 
boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a 
German cannot tell you how it is bounded at 

any moment. 

W aid en. 



[5] 



JANUARY SIXTEENTH 

At least let us have healthy books, a stout horse- 
rake or a kitchen range which is not cracked. 
Let not the poet shed tears only for the public 
weal. He should be as vigorous as a sugar 
maple, with sap enough to maintain his own 
verdure, beside what runs into the troughs, and 
not like a vine, which being cut in the spring 
bears no fruit, but bleeds to death in the en- 
deavor to heal its wounds. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

JANUARY SEVENTEENTH 

Why should we be in such desperate haste to 
succeed, and in such desperate enterprises ? If 
a man does not keep pace with his companions, 
perhaps it is because he hears a different drum- 
mer. Let him step to the music which he hears, 
however measured or far away. It is not im- 
portant that he should mature as soon as an 
apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring 

into summer ? 

Walden. 

JANUARY EIGHTEENTH 

The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit ; it 
is a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose can- 
not be split on any Grampus or material rock, 
but itself will split rocks till it succeeds. 

Cape Cod. 

[6] 



JANUARY NINETEENTH 

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the 
traveler always has a resource in the skies. 
They are constantly turning a new page to view. 
The wind sets the types on this blue ground, 
and the inquiring may always read a new truth 

there. 

A Week on the Concord Rinjer. 

JANUARY TWENTIETH 

To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to ex- 
clude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. 
Let us improve our opportunities, then, before 

the evil days come. 

Walking. 

JANUARY TWENTY-FIRST 

Why should we live with such hurry and waste 
of life ? We are determined to be starved be- 
fore we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in 
time saves nine, and so they take a thousand 
stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for 
work., we have n't any of any consequence. We 
have the Saint Vitus' dance, and cannot possibly 

keep our heads still. 

Walden. 

JANUARY TWENTY-SECOND 

What avails it though a light be placed on the 
top of a hill, if you spend all your life directly 

[ 7 ] 



under the hill ? It might as well be under a 

bushel. 

Cape Cod. 

JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD 

Most people with whom I talk, men and women 

even of some originality and genius, have their 

scheme of the universe all cut and dried, — very 

dry\ I assure you, to hear, dry enough to burn, 

dry-rotted and powder-post, methinks, — which 

they set up between you and them in the shortest 

intercourse; an ancient and tottering frame with 

all its boards blown off. They do not walk 

without their bed. 

tf^alden. 

JANUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 

Why should not we meet, not always as dys- 
peptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes 
as ^wpeptics, to congratulate each other on the 
ever-glorious morning ? 

Anti-Slanjery and Reform Papers. 

JANUARY TWENTY-FIFTH 
Now chiefly is my natal hour. 
And only now my prime of life. 
I will not doubt the love untold. 
Which not my worth nor want hath bought. 
Which wooed me young and wooes me old. 
And to this eveninc); hath me brouiiht. 

A Week on the Concord River, 

[8] 



JANUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 

Men are in the main alike, but they were made 
several in order that they might be various. If 
a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly 
or quite as well as another; if a high one, indi- 



vidual excellence is to be reo-arded. 

o 



Walking. 



JANUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

However mean your life is, meet it and live it ; 
do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not 
so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you 
are richest. The faultfinder will find faults even 
in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. 

IValden. 

JANUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Behind every man's busy-ness there should be a 

level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as 

within the reef encircling a coral isle there is 

always an expanse of still water, where the 

depositions are going on which will finally raise 

it above the surface. 

A Week on the Concord Ri^ver, 

JANUARY TWENTY-NINTH 

Follow your genius closely enough, and it will 
not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. 

WaUen. 

[9] 



JANUARY THIRTIETH 

No face welcomed us but the fine fantastic sprays 
of free and happy evergreen trees, waving one 
above another in their ancient home. 

The Maine Woods. 

JANUARY THIRTY-FIRST 

Art is as long as ever, but life is more inter- 
rupted and less available for a man's proper 
pursuits. It is not an era of repose. We have 
used up all our inherited freedom. 

Anti- Slavery and Reform Papers. 



[ 10 ] 



FEBRUARY 



FEBRUARY FIRST 

THERE can be no very black melancholy to 
him who lives in the midst of Nature and 
has his senses still. There was never yet such 
a storm but it was ^olian music to a healthy 

and innocent ear. 

Walden. 

FEBRUARY SECOND 

Let no one think that I do not love the old 

ministers. They were, probably, the best men 

of their generation, and they deserve that their 

biographies should fill the pages of the town 

histories. If I could but hear the " glad tidings" 

of which they tell, and which, perchance, they 

heard, I might write in a worthier strain than 

this. 

Cape Cod. 

FEBRUARY THIRD 

Methinks that must be where all my property 
lies, cast up on the rocks on some distant and un- 
explored stream, and waiting for an unheard-of 

[■■ ] 



freshet to fetch it down. O make haste, ye gods, 

with your winds and rains, and start the jam 

before it rots ! 

The Maine Woods. 

FEBRUARY FOURTH 

Yet I rarely failed to find, even in mid-winter, 
some warm and springy swamp where the grass 
and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with peren- 
nial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally 

awaited the return of spring. 

Walden. 

FEBRUARY FIFTH 

How could the patient pine have known 

The morning breeze would come, 
Or humble flowers anticipate 
The insect's noonday hum, — 

Till the new light with morning cheer 
From far streamed through the aisles, 

And nimbly told the forest trees 
For many stretching miles ? 

A Week on the Concord Rp-ver. 

FEBRUARY SIXTH 

God Himself culminates in the present moment, 
and will never be more divine in the lapse of all 
the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at 
all what is sublime and noble only by the per- 

.' petual instilling and drenching of the reality that 

[ '^J 



surrounds us. The universe constantly and 
obediently answers to our conceptions ; whether 
we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. 

WalJen. 

FEBRUARY SEVENTH 

In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest 

charities still maintain a foothold. A cold and 

searching wind drives awav all contagion, and 

nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue 

in it ; and accordingly, whatever we meet with 

in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, 

we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a 

Puritan toughness. 

A Winter Walk. 

FEBRUARY EIGHTH 

This world is but canvass to our imaginations. 
I see men with infinite pains endeavoring to 
realize to their bodies, what I, with at least equal 
pains, would realize to my imagination, — its 
capacities ; for certainly there is a life of the 
mind above the wants of the body and inde- 
pendent of it. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

FEBRUARY NINTH 

When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive 
that only great and worthy things have any per- 
manent and absolute existence, — that petty fears 

[ 13 ] 



and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the 

reality. 

Walden. 

FEBRUARY TENTH 

There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like 
the dark, if you let in a stronger light upon it. 

A IVeek on the Concord Ri-ver. 

FEBRUARY ELEVENTH 

Such is oftenest the young man's introduction to 
the forest, and the most original part of himself. 
He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, 
until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in 
him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet 
or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and 

fish-pole behind. 

fValden. 

FEBRUARY TWELFTH 

It is true actually as it is true really ; it is true 
materially as it is true spiritually, that they who 
seek honestly and sincerely, with all their hearts 
and lives and strength, to earn their bread, do 
earn it, and it is sure to be very sweet to them. 

Letters to Various Perrons. 

FEBRUARY THIRTEENTH 

In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws 
of the universe will appear less complex, and 
solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, 

[ H J 



nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles 

in the air, your work need not be lost ; that is 

where they should be. Now put the foundations 

under them. 

IFalden, 

FEBRUARY FOURTEENTH 

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is 

easy to detect a certain precocity. When we 

should still be growing children, we are already 

little men. 

Walking. 

FEBRUARY FIFTEENTH 

Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave 

man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the 

friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing 

can make life a burden to me. 

Walden. 

FEBRUARY SIXTEENTH 

Behold the difference between the oriental and 
the occidental. The former has nothing to do 
in this v/orld ; the latter is full of activity. The 
one looks in the sun till his eyes are put out; 
the other follows him prone in his westward 

course. 

A Week on the Concord Ri-ver. 

[ 15 ] 



FEBRUARY SEVENTEENTH 

In the winter, warmth stands for all virtue, and 

we resort in thought to a trickling rill, with its 

bare stones shining in the sun, and to warm 

springs in the woods, with as much eagerness as 

rabbits and robins. The steam which rises from 

swamps and pools, is as dear and domestic as 

that of our own kettle. 

A Winter Walk. 

FEBRUARY EIGHTEENTH 

If a man has faith he will co-operate with equal 
faith everywhere ; if he has not faith, he will 
continue to live like the rest of the world, what- 
ever company he is joined to. To co-operate, 
in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means 

to get our living together. 

Walden. 

FEBRUARY NINETEENTH 

But after all, man is the great poet, and not 
Homer or Shakspeare •, and our language itself, 
and the common arts of life are his work. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

FEBRUARY TWENTIETH 

But there is no such thing as accomplishing a 
righteous reform by the use of "expediency." 
There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In 
morals, the only sliders are back-sliders. 

Anti-Sla-uery and Reform Papers. 

[ i6 ] 



FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIRST 

When we would rest our bodies we cease to 
support them; wc recline on the lap of earth. 
So when we would rest our spirits, we must 
recline on the Great Spirit. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SECOND 

In the winter, the botanist needs not confine 
himself to his books and herbarium, and give 
over his out-door pursuits, but may study a new 
department of vegetable physiology, what may 
be called crystalline botany, then. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-THIRD 

Music is the sound of the universal laws pro- 
mulgated. It is the only assured tone. There 
are in it such strains as far surpass any man's 
faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are 
to be learned which it will be worth the while 

to learn. 

A Week on the Concord Rvuer. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FOURTH 

How far men go for the material of their houses ! 
The inhabitants of the most civilized cities, in 
all ages, send into far, primitive forests, beyond 
the bounds of their civilization, where the moose 
and bear and savage dwell, for their pine-boards 

[ 17 ] 



for ordinary use. And, on the other hand, the 
savage soon receives from cities, iron arrow- 
points, hatchets, and guns, to point his savageness 

with. 

IVaUen. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-FIFTH 

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the out- 
ward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, 

or the wilderness ! 

Walking. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SIXTH 

It must be confessed that the Pilgrims possessed 
but ^tw of the qualities of the modern pioneer. 
They were not the ancestors of the American 
backwoodsmen. They did not go at once into 
the woods with their axes. They were a family 
and church, and were more anxious to keep to- 
gether, though it were on the sand, than to explore 

and colonize a New World. 

Cape Cod. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Often the body is warmed, but the imagination 

is torpid ; the body is fat, but the imagination is 

lean and shrunk. 

A Week on the Concord Ki-ver. 



[ '8 ] 



FEBRUARY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure 
for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. 
I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts 
in ; they are commonly ruled for dollars and 

cents. 

Anti-Sla'-very and Reform Papers. 

FEBRUARY TWENTY-NINTH 

In the winter, I stop short in the path to admire 
how the trees grow up without forethought, 
regardless of the time and circumstances. They 
do not wait as man does, but now is the golden 
age of the sapling. Earth, air, sun, and rain, 
are occasion enough ; they were no better in 
primeval centuries. The " winter of their dis- 
content " never comes. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 



[ 19 ] 



MARCH 



MARCH FIRST 

ANY of the phenomena of Winter are sug- 
gestive of an inexpressible tenderness and 
fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this 
king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant ; 
but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the 

tresses of Summer. 

IVaUen. 

MARCH SECOND 

Happy the man who observes the heavenly and 
the terrestrial laws in just proportion ; whose every 
faculty, from the soles of his feet to the crown 
of his head, obeys the law of its level ; who 
neither stoops nor goes on tiptoe, but lives a 
balanced life, acceptable to Nature and to God. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

MARCH THIRD 

If we could listen but for an instant to the chaunt 
of the Indian muse, we should under^;tand why 
he Vv'ill not exchange his sava«;eness for civillza- 

tion. 

A IFick en the Concord River. 

[ 21 J 



MARCH FOURTH 

But, on more accounts than one, I had had 
enough of moose-hunting. I had not come to 
the woods for this purpose, nor had I foreseen 
it, though I had been willing to learn how the 
Indian manceuvred ; but one moose killed was 
as good, if not as bad, as a dozen. The after- 
noon's tragedy, and my share in it, as it affected 
the innocence, destroyed the pleasure of my 

adventure. 

The Maine IVoods. 

MARCH FIFTH 

It is true, I never assisted the sun materially 

in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last 

importance only to be present at it. 

Walden. 

MARCH SIXTH 

The mariner who makes the safest port in Heaven, 

perchance, seems to his friends on earth to be 

shipwrecked, for they deem Boston Harbor the 

better place ; though perhaps invisible to them, 

a skillful pilot comes to meet him, and the fairest 

and balmiest gales blow ofF that coast, his good 

ship makes the land in halcyon days, and he 

kisses the shore in rapture there, while his old 

hulk tosses in the surf here. 

Cape Cod. 

[ 22 ] 



MARCH SEVENTH 

A sentence should read as if its author, had he 
held a plow instead of a pen, could have drawn 
a furrow deep and straight to the end. The 
scholar requires hard and serious labor to give 
an impetus to his thought. He will learn to 
grasp the pen firmly so, and wield it gracefully 
and effectively, as an axe or a sword. 

A Week o?i the Concord Rinjer. 

MARCH EIGHTH 

We commonly do not remember that it is, after 
all, always the first person that is speaking. I 
should not talk so much about myself if there 
were anybody else whom I knew as well. Un- 
fortunately, I am confined to this theme by the 

narrowness of my experience. 

IValden. 

MARCH NINTH 

I think that I cannot preserve my health and 
spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at 
least, — and it is commonly more than that, — - 
sauntering through the woods and over the hills 
and fields, absolutely free from all worldly en- 
gagements. You may safely say, A penny for 

your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. 

Walking. 

[ 23] 



MARCH TENTH 

The ears were made, not for such trivial uses as 
men are wont to suppose, but to hear celestial 
sounds. The eyes were not made for such 
grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn 
out by, but to behold beauty now invisible. 

A fVeek on the Concord Ki^er. 



MARCH ELEVENTH 

Probably if our lives were more conformed to 

nature, we should not need to defend ourselves 

aeainst her heats and colds, but find her oui- 

constant nurse and friend, as do plants and 

quadrupeds. 

A Winter Walk. 



MARCH TWELFTH 

The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, 

stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, 

to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, 

but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which 

precede flowers and fruit, — not a fossil earth, 

but a living earth; compared with whose great 

central life all animal and vegetable life is merely 

parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuviae from 

their graves. 

Walden. 



[ 24] 



MARCH THIRTEENTH 

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, 
but beautiful, — while his knowledge, so called, 
is oftentimes worse than useless, besides being 
ugly. Which is the best man to deal with, — 
he who knows nothing about a subject, and, 
what is extremely rare, knows that he knows 
nothing, or he who really knows something 
about it, but thinks that he knows all ? 

IFalking. 

MARCH FOURTEENTH 

A true politeness does not result from any hasty 
and artificial polishing, it is true, but grows 
naturally in characters of the right grain and 
quality, through a long fronting of men and 
events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune. 
A JVeek on the Concord Ri-ver. 

MARCH FIFTEENTH 

Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that 
you can wake up in the night and think of your 
work with satisfaction, — a work at which you 
would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse. So 
will help you God, and so only. Every nail 
driven should be as another rivet in the machine 
of the universe, you carrying on the work. 

Walden. 

[ ^5 ] 



MARCH SIXTEENTH 

What is any man's discourse to me, if I am not 
sensible of something in it as steady and cheery 
as the creaic of crickets ? In it the woods must 
be relieved against the sky. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 

MARCH SEVENTEENTH 

Yet these men had no need to travel to be as 
wise as Solomon in all his glory, so similar are 
the lives of men in all countries, and fraught 

. with the same homely experiences. One half 
the world knows how the other half lives. 

A IVeek on the Concord Ri'ver. 

MARCH EIGHTEENTH 

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle 
thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to 
love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, 
a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, 
and trust. It is to solve some of the problems 
of life, not only theoretically, but practically. 

fVaUen. 

MARCH NINETEENTH 

What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a 
winter's day, when the meadow mice come out 
by the wallsides, and the chicadee lisps in the 
defiles of the wood ? The warmth comes directly 
from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth, 
[ ^6 ] 



as in summer ; and when we feel his beams on 

our backs as we are treading; some snowy dell, 

we are grateful as for a special kindness, and 

bless the sun which has followed us into that 

by-place. • 

A Winter Walk. 

MARCH TWENTIETH 

It is but thin soil where we stand ; I have felt 
my roots in a richer ere this. I have seen a 
bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with 
a straw, which reminded me of myself. — 

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 

By a chance bond together, 
Dangling this way and that, their links 
Were made so loose and wide, 
Methinks, 
For milder weather. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

MARCH TWENTY-FIRST 

Our whole life is startlingly moral. There is 
never an instant's truce between virtue and vice. 
Goodness is the only investment that never fails. 

WaUen. 

MARCH TWENTY-SECOND 

Do not hire a man who does your work for 
money, but him who does it for love of it. 

Anti-Sla'-very and Reform Papers. 

[ 27 ] 



MARCH TWENTY-THIRD 

But if we would appreciate the flow that is in 
these books, we must expect to feel it rise from 
the page like an exhalation, and wash away our 
critical brains like burr millstones, flowing to 
higher levels above and behind ourselves. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'uer. 

MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH 

We do not realize how far and widely, or how 

near and narrowly, we are to look. The greater 

part of the phenomena of Nature are for this 

reason concealed from us all our lives. Xhe 

gardener sees only the gardener's garden. Here, 

too, as in political economy, the supply answers to 

the demand. Nature does not cast pearls before 

swine. 

Autumnal Tints. 

MARCH TWENTY-FIFTH 

So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, 

to establish new and better customs in the place 

of the old. You need not rest your reputation 

on the dinners you give. 

IValden. 

MARCH TWENTY-SIXTH 

May we not see God ? Are we to be put ofF and 
amused in this life, as it were with a mere alle- 

[ 28 ] 



gory ? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which 

she is commonly taken to be the symbol merely ? 

A li^eek on the Concord Ri'ver. 

MARCH TWENTY-SEVENTH 

In society you will not find health, but in Nature. 
Unless our feet at least stood in the midst of 
Nature, all our faces would be pale and livid. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 

MARCH TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Let a man take time enough for the most trivial 
deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. 
The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or 
confusion, as if the short spring days were an 

eternity. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

MARCH TWENY-NINTH 

Perhaps the time will come when every house 

even will have not only its sleeping-rooms, and 

dining-room, and talking-room or parlor, but its 

thinking-room also, and the architects will put 

it into their plans. 

A Yankee in Canada, 

MARCH THIRTIETH 

We do not live by justice but by grace. As 
the sort of justice which concerns us in our daily 
intercourse is not that administered by the judge 

[ ^-9 ] 



so the historical justice which we prize is not 
arrived at by nicely balancing the evidence. 

Anti-Sla'very and Reform Papers. 

MARCH THIRTY-FIRST 

Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an 

axe and went down to the woods by Walden 

Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my 

house, and began to cut down some tall arrowy 

white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It 

is difficult to begin without borrowing, but 

perhaps it is the most generous course thus to 

permit your fellow-men to have an interest in 

your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he 

released his hold on it, said that it was the apple 

of his eye ; but I returned it sharper than I 

received it. 

Walden. 



[ 30] 



APRIL 



APRIL FIRST 

IN the long run men hit only what they aim 
at. Therefore, though they should fail im- 
mediately, they had better aim at something high. 

Walden. 

APRIL SECOND 

The little rill tinkled the louder, and peopled all 
the wilderness for me ; and the glassy smooth- 
ness of the sleeping lake, laving the shores of a 
new world, with the dark, fantastic rocks rising 
here and there from its surface, made a scene 
not easily described. It has left such an im- 
pression of stern, yet gentle, wildness on my 
memory as will not soon be effaced. 

The Maine Woods. 

APRIL THIRD 

The change from storm and winter to serene 

and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours 

to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis 

which all things proclaim. It is seemingly 

instantaneous at last. 

Walden. 

[ 31 ] 



APRIL FOURTH 

The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowledge 
of good and evil. He is not a true man of 
science who does not bring some sympathy 
to his studies, and expect to learn something by 
behavior as well as by application. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

APRIL FIFTH 

All that is told of the sea has a fabulous sound 
to an inhabitant of the land, and all its products 
have a certain fabulous quality, as if they be- 
longed to another planet, from sea-weed to a 
sailor's yarn, or a fish-story. In this element 
the animal and vegetable kingdoms meet and 

are strangely mingled. 

Cape Cod. 

APRIL SIXTH 

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his 

body, to the god he worships, after a style purely 

his own, nor can he get off by hammering 

marble instead. We are all sculptors and 

painters, and our material is our own flesh and 

blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at 

once to refine a man's features, any meanness 

or sensuality to imbrute them. 

Walden. 

[ 32 ] 



APRIL SEVENTH 

The landscape-painter uses the figures of men 
to mark a road. He would not make that use 
of my figure. I walk out into a Nature such 
as the old prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, 
Homer, Chaucer, walked in. 

Walking. 

APRIL EIGHTH 

How many mornings, summer and winter, be- 
fore yet any neighbor was stirring about his 
business, have I been about mine ! No doubt, 
many of my townsmen have met me returning 
from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston 
in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their 

work. 

Walden. 

APRIL NINTH 

A book should contain pure discoveries, glimpses 
of terra firma.^ though by shipwrecked mariners, 
and not the art of navigation by those who have 
never been out of sight of land. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

APRIL TENTH 

So simplify the problem of life, distinguish the 
necessary and the real. Probe the earth to see 
where your main roots run. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

[ 33 ] 



APRIL ELEVENTH 

But Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and no 
dust settles on his true passages. It lightens 
along the line, and we are reminded that flowers 
have bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten, 
in England. Before the earnest gaze of the 
reader, the rust and moss of time gradually drop 
off, and the original green life is revealed. He 
was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe 
quite as modern men do. 

A Week on the Concord Rv~uer. 

APRIL TWELFTH 

The first sparrow of spring ! The year begin- 
ning with younger hope than ever ! The faint 
silvery wafblings heard over the partially bare 
and moist fields from the bluebird, the song- 
sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes 
of winter tinkled as they fell ! What at such 
a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and 

all written revelations ? 

IValden. 

APRIL THIRTEENTH 

Genius is a light which makes the darkness 
visible, like the lightning's flash, which per- 
chance shatters the temple of knowledge itself, 
— and not a taper lighted at the hearth-stone 
of the race, which pales before the light of 

common day. 

Walking, 

[ 34] 



APRIL FOURTEENTH 

There are some things which a man never 

speaks of, which are much finer kept silent 

about. To the highest communications we 

only lend a silent ear. Our finest relations 

are not simply kept silent about, but buried 

under a positive depth of silence, never to be 

revealed. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

APRIL FIFTEENTH 

It is true, we are such poor navigators that our 

thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on 

upon a harborless coast, are conversant only 

with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer 

for the public ports of entry, and go into the 

dry docks of science, where they merely refit 

for this world, and no natural currents concur 

to individualize them. 

IValden. 

APRIL SIXTEENTH 

The most interesting thing which I heard of, in 

this township of Hull, was an unfailing spring, 

whose locality was pointed out to me, on the 

side of a distant hill, as I was panting along 

the shore, though I did not visit it. Perhaps, 

if I should go through Rome, it would be some 

spring on the Capitoline Hill I should remember 

the longest. 

Cape Cud. 

[ 35 ] 



APRIL SEVENTEENTH 

One generation abandons the enterprises of 

another like stranded vessels. 

Walden. 

APRIL EIGHTEENTH 

Tell Shakspeare to attend some leisure hour, 
For now I 've business with this drop of dew. 
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower, — 
I '11 'meet him shortly when the sky is blue. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

APRIL NINETEENTH 

I suspect that, if you should go to the end of the 
world, you would find somebody there going 
farther, as if just starting for home at sundown, 
and having a last word before he drove off. 

The Maine Woods. 

APRIL TWENTIETH 

We do not learn much from learned books, but 

from true, sincere, human books, from frank and 

honest biographies. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

APRIL TWENTY-FIRST 

As I stand over the insect crawling amid the 
pine needles on the forest floor, and endca\'or- 
ing to conceal itself from my sight, and ask 
myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts 
and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, 

L 36 ] 



be its benefactor and Impart to its race some 

cheering information, I am reminded of the 

greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands 

over me, the human insect. 

Walden. 

APRIL TWENTY-SECOND 

The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. If 
any character is given it should be as severely 
true as the decision of the three judges below, 
and not the partial testimony of friends. 

A Week on the Concord Ri^er. 



APRIL TWENTY-THIRD 

Methinks I see the thousand shrines erected to 

Hospitality shining afar in all countries, as well 

Mahometan and Jewish, as Christian, khans, 

and caravansaries, and inns, whither all pilgrims 

without distinction resort. 

The Landlord. 



APRIL TWENTY-FOURTH 

Between whom there is hearty truth there is 
love ; and in proportion to our truthfulness and 
confidence in one another, our lives are divine 
and miraculous, and answer to our ideal. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'uer. 

[ 37 ] 



APRIL TWENTY-FIFTH 

A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and 

expressive feature. It is earth's eye ; looking 

into which the beholder measures the depth of 

his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the 

shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, 

and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its 

overhanging brows. 

IValden. 

APRIL TWENTY-SIXTH 

Humor is not so distinct a quality as, for the 
purposes of criticism, it is commonly regarded, 
but allied to every other, even the divine faculty. 
The familiar and cheerful conversation about 
every hearthside, if it be analyzed, will be found 
to be sweetened by this principle. 

Anti-Sla'uery and Reform Papers. 

APRIL TWENTY-SEVENTH 

For a companion, I require one who will make 
an equal demand on me with my own genius. 
Such a one will always be rightly tolerant. It 
is suicide and corrupts good manners to welcome 
any less than this. I value and trust those 
who love and praise my aspiration rather than 

my performance. 

A Week on the Concord Ri-ver, 

[ 38 ] 



APRIL TWENTY-EIGHTH 

As every season seems best to us in its turn, so 

the coming in of spring is like the creation of 

Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the 

Golden Age. 

IValden. 

APRIL TWENTY-NINTH 

Only their names and residence make one love 

'" fishes. I would know even the number of 
their fin-rays, and how many scales compose the 
lateral line. I am the wiser in respect to all 
knowledges, and the better qualified for all for- 
tunes, for knowing that there is a minnow in 
the brook. Methinks I have need even of his 
sympathy, and to be his fellow in a degree. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 

APRIL THIRTIETH 

Shadows, referred to the source of light, are 
pyramids whose bases are never greater than 
those of the substances which cast them, but 
light is a spherical congeries of pyramids, whose 
very apexes are the sun itself, and hence the 
system shines with uninterrupted light. But 
if the light we use is but a paltry and narrow 
taper, most objects will cast a shadow wider 

than themselves. 

A IVeek on the Concord Ria/er. 



[ 39 ] 



MAY 



MAY FIRST 

N the midst of this labyrinth let us live a thread 
of life. We must act with so rapid and 
resistless a purpose in one direction that our vices 
will necessarily trail behind. 

Letters to Various Persons, 

MAY SECOND 

I 've heard within my inmost soul 

Such cheerful morning news, 
In the horizon of my mind 

Have seen such orient hues, 

As in the twilight of the dawn, 

When the first birds awake, 
Are heard within some silent wood. 

Where they the small twigs break. 

A IFeek on the Concord River. 

MAY THIRD 

Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest 
man has hardly need to count more than his ten 
fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten 

[ 41 ] 



toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, 

simplicity ! I say, let your affairs be as two or 

three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead 

of a million count half a dozen, and keep your 

accounts on your thumb nail. 

WaUen. 

MAY FOURTH 

There is thus about all natural products a certain 

volatile and ethereal quality which represents their 

highest value, and which cannot be vulgarized, 

or bought and sold. 

mid Apples. 

MAY FIFTH 

The meadow flowers spring and bloom where 

the waters annually deposit their slime, not 

where they reach in some freshet only. A man 

is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his 

past deed. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

MAY SIXTH 

Under the one word, house, are included the 
school-house, the alms-house, the jail, the tavern, 
the dwelling-house ; and the meanest shed or 
cave in which men live contains the elements 
of all these. But nowhere on the earth stands 

the entire and perfect house. 

Excursions. 

[ 42 ] 



MAY SEVENTH 

No doubt another may also think for me ; but 
it is not therefore desirable that he should do 
so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself. 

Walden. 

MAY EIGHTH 

A Friend is one who incessantly pays us the 
compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, 
and who can appreciate them in us. It takes 
two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and 

another to hear. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

MAY NINTH 

It is generally supposed that they who have 
long been conversant with the Ocean can fore- 
tell by certain indications, such as its roar and 
the notes of sea-fowl, when it will change from 
calm to storm ; but probably no such ancient 
mariner as we dream of exists ; they know no 
more, at least, than the older sailors do about 
this voyage of life on which we are all embarked. 

Cape Cod. 

MAY TENTH 

Nations are possessed with an insane ambition 
to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the 
amount of hammered stone they leave. What 

[ 43 ] 



if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish 
their manners ? One piece of good sense would 
be more memorable than a monument as high 

as the moon. 

IValden. 

MAY ELEVENTH 

Nature has taken more care than the fondest 
. parent for the education and refinement of her 
children. Consider the silent influence which 
flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the 
meadow than the lady in the bower. When I 
walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise 
purveyor has been there before me ; my most 
delicate experience is typified there. 

Excursions. 

MAY TWELFTH 

Can there be any greater reproach than an idle 
learning ? Learn to split wood, at least. The 
necessity of labor and conversation with many 
men and things, to the scholar is rarely well 
remembered; steady labor with the hands, which 
engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably 
the best method of removing palaver and senti- 
mentality out of one's style, both of speaking 

and writing. 

A JVeek on the Concord Ri-ver. 

[ 44 ] 



MAY THIRTEENTH 

It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, 

filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing 

against the land, heard several miles inland. 

Instead of having a dog to growl before your 

door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for 

a whole Cape ! On the whole, we are glad of 

the storm, which would show us the ocean in 

its angriest mood. 

Cape Cod. 



MAY FOURTEENTH 

When I think of the benefactors of the race, 
whom we have apotheosized as messengers from 
heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not 
see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any 

car-load of fashionable furniture. 

IValden. 



MAY FIFTEENTH 

In May and June the woodland quire is in full 
tune, and given the immense spaces of hollow 
air, and this curious human ear, one does not 
see how the void could be better filled. 
Each summer sound 

Is a summer round. 

Excursiuns. 



[ 45 ] 



MAY SIXTEENTH 

The very timber and boards and shingles of 
which our houses are made, grew but yesterday 
in a wilderness where the Indian still hunts and 
the moose runs wild. New York has her 
wilderness within her own borders; and though 
the sailors of Europe are familiar with the 
soundings of her Hudson, and Fulton long since 
invented the steamboat on its waters, an Indian 
is still necessary to guide her scientific men to 
its head-waters in the Adirondac country. 

The Maine Woods. 



MAY SEVENTEENTH 

As if you could kill time without injuring 

eternity. 

Walden. 



MAY EIGHTEENTH 

Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's 
laws are more immutable than any despot's, yet 
to man's daily life they rarely seem rigid, but 
permit him to relax with license in summer 
weather. He is not harshly reminded of the 
things he may not do. 

A Week on the Co)uorJ Ri-uer. 



[ 46 ] 



MAY NINETEENTH 

How prompt we are to satisfy the huno-er and 
thirst of our bodies, how slow to satisfy the 
hunger and thirst of our souls. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

MAY TWENTIETH 

We loiter in winter while it is already spring. 
In a pleasant spring morning all men's sins are 
forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While 
such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may 
return. Through our own recovered innocence 
we discern the innocence of our neighbors. 

Walden. 

MAY TWENTY-FIRST 

You can hardly convince a man of an error in 
a life-time, but must content yourself with the 
reflection that the progress of science is slow. 
If he is not convinced, his grand-children may be. 
A Week on the Concord Rluer. 

MAY TWENTY-SECOND 

I would say to the Society for the Diffusion of 
Useful Knowledge, sometimes, — Go to grass. 
You have eaten hay long enough. The sprino- 
has come with its green crop. The very cows 
are driven to their country pastures before the 
end of May; though 1 have heard of one 
unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the barn 

[ 47 ] 



and fed her on hay all the year round. So, 
frequently, the Society for the Diffusion of Use- 
ful Knowledge treats its cattle. 

IValking. 

MAY TWENTY-THIRD 

Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after 
the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfold- 
ing its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be 
plucked by the musing traveller; planted and 
tended once by children's hands, in front-yard 
plots, — now standing by wall-sides in retired 
pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests; 
— the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that 

family. 

JVatden. 

MAY TWENTY-FOURTH 

7^he world seemed decked for some holyday or 
prouder pageantry, with silken streamers flying, 
and the course of our lives to wind on before 
us like a green lane into a country maze, at the 
season when fruit trees are in blossom. 

A We£k on the Concord Ri'ver. 

MAY TWENTY-FIFTH 

^ The flowers of the apple are perhaps the most 
beautiful of any tree's, so copious and so delicious 
to both sight and scent. The walker is fre- 
quently tempted to turn and linger near some 

[ 4« J 



more than usually handsome one, whose blossoms 

are two thirds expanded. How superior it is in 

these respects to the pear, whose blossoms are 

neither colored nor fragrant ! 

IVild Apples. 

MAY TWENTY-SIXTH 

I would not subtract anything from the praise 
that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand 
justice for all who by their lives and works are 
a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a 
man's uprightness and benevolence, which are, 

as it were, his stem and leaves. 

IVaUen. 

MAY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

It may be that the forenoon is brighter than the 
afternoon, not only because of the greater trans- 
parency of its atmosphere, but because we 
naturally look most into the west, as forward 
into the day, and so in the forenoon see the 
sunny side of things, but in the afternoon the 
shadow of every tree. 

A Week on the Concord Ri^er. 

MAY TWENTY-EIGHTH C^ 

It is remarkable what a serious business men 
' make of getting their dinners, and how univer- 
sally shiftlessness and a grovelling taste take 
refuge in a merely ant-like industry. Better go 

[ 49 ] 



without your dinner, I thought, than be thus 
everlastingly fishing for it like a cormorant. Of 
course, viewed from the shore.^ our pursuits in the 
country appear not a whit less frivolous. 

Cape Cod. 

MAY TWENTY-NINTH 

In my walks I would fain return to my senses. 

What business have I in the woods, if I am 

thinking of something out of the woods ? I 

suspect myself, and cannot help a shudder, when 

I find myself so implicated even in what are 

called good works, — for this may sometimes 

happen. 

Walking, 

MAY THIRTIETH 

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of 
Nature, — of sun and wind and rain, of summer 
and winter, — such health, such cheer, they 
afford forever ! and such sympathy have they 
ever with our race, that all Nature would be 
affected, and the sun's brightness fade, and the 
winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain 
tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put 
on mourning in midsummer, if any man should 
ever for a just cause grieve. 



Walden. 



[ 50 ] 



MAY THIRTY-FIRST 

And to be admitted to Nature's hearth costs 
nothing. None is excluded ; but excludes him- 
self. You have only to push aside the curtain. 

Letters to Various Persons. 



,~f 



[ 51 ] 



JUNE 



JUNE FIRST 

'O run on my bank can drain it, for my 
wealth is not possession but enjoyment. 

Letters to Various Persons. 



JUNE SECOND 

The morning, which is the most memorable 

season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then 

there is least somnolence in us ; and for an hour, 

at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers 

all the rest of the day and night. 

IValden. 

JUNE THIRD 

Thank God, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the 
framing of the world, but we are freemen of 
the universe, and not sentenced to any caste. 

A Week on the Concord River. 



JUNE FOURTH 

Nature has from the first expanded the minute 
blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, 
above men's heads and unobserved by them. 

[ 53 ] 



We see only the flowers that are under our feet 

in the meadows. 

IValking. 

V JUNE FIFTH 

What is it gilds the trees and clouds. 

And paints the heavens so gay, 
But yonder fast abiding light 

With its unchanging ray ? 

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood, 

Upon a winter's morn, 
Where'er his silent beams intrude 

The murky night is gone. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

JUNE SIXTH 

You will pardon some obscurities, for there are 

more secrets in my trade than in most men's, 

and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable 

from its very nature. I would gladly tell all 

that I know about it, and never paint " No 

Admittance " on my gate. 

Walden. 

JUNE SEVENTH 

Nature will bear the closest inspection ; she 
invites us to lay our eye level with the smallest 
leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. She 
has no interstices; every part is full of life. I 
explore, too, with pleasure, the sources of the 

[ 54 ] 



V5o 



myriad sounds which crowd the summer noon, 
and which seem the very grain and stuff of 

which eternity is made. 

Excursions. 

JUNE EIGHTH 

We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but 
by rising above or diving below its plane ; as 
the worm escapes drought and frost by boring 
a few inches deeper. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

JUNE NINTH 

No people can long continue provincial in /r, 

character who have the propensity for politics f (y 
and whittling, and rapid travelling, which the 
Yankees have, and who are leaving the mother 
country behind in the variety of their notions 
and inventions. The possession and exercise of 
practical talent merely are a sure and rapid means 
of intellectual culture and independence. 

T/ie Maine Woods. 

JUNE TENTH 

The restless ocean may at any moment cast up 
a whale or a wrecked vessel at your feet. All 
the reporters in the world, the most rapid stenog- 
raphers, could not report the news it brings. 

Cape Cod. 

[ 55 ] 



JUNE ELEVENTH 

A man may esteem himself happy when that 
which is his food is also his medicine. There is no 
kind of herb that grows, but somebody or other 
says that it is good. I am very glad to hear it. 
It reminds me of the first chapter of Genesis. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

JUNE TWELFTH 

We are made to exaggerate the importance of 
what work we do ; and yet how much is not 
done by us ! or, what if we had been taken 
sick ? How vigilant we are ! determined not 
to live by faith if we can avoid it ; all the day 
long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our 
prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. 

IFaUen. 

JUNE THIRTEENTH 

Why should not our whole life and its scenery 
be actually thus fair and distinct ? All our lives 
want a suitable background. They should at 
least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impres- 
sive to behold as objects in the desert, a broken 
shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless 

horizon. 

A IFeek on the Concord Ri'ver. 

JUNE FOURTEENTH 

The pines have developed their delicate blossoms 
on the highest twigs of the wood every summer 

[ 56 ] 



for ages, as well over the heads of Nature's red 
children as of her white ones; yet scarcely a 
farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen them. 

Excursions. 

JUNE FIFTEENTH 

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true 
spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task 
the reader more than any exercise which the 
customs of the day esteem. It requires a train- 
ing such as the athletes underwent, the steady 
intention almost of the whole life to this object. 

IValden. 

JUNE SIXTEENTH 

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book 
as in a house, if the reader would abide there. 
It is next to beauty, and a very high art. Some 
have this merit only. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

JUNE SEVENTEENTH 

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which 
is said to be the only beast which ruminates 
when walking. When a traveller asked Words- 
worth's servant to show him her master's study, 
she answered, " Here is his library, but his study 

is out of doors." 

Excursions. 

[ 57 ] 



JUNE EIGHTEENTH 

The morning wind forever blows, the poem of 

creation is uninterrupted ; but few are the ears 

that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the 

earth everywhere. 

JValden. 

JUNE NINETEENTH 

But special I remember thee, 

Wachusett, who like me 

Standest alone without society. 

Thy far blue eye, 

A remnant of the sky, 

Seen through the clearing or the gorge, 

Or from the windows on the forge, 

Doth leaven all it passes by. 

Nothing is true, 

But stands 'tween me and you. 

Thou western pioneer 

Who know'st not shame nor fear, 

By venturous spirit driven. 

Under the eaves of heaven. 

And can'st expand thee there, 

And breathe enough of air ? 

Upholding heaven, holding down earth, 

Thy pastime from thy birth. 

Not steadied by the one nor leaning on the other; 

May I approve myself thy worthy brother ! 

A Walk to Wachusett. 

[ 58 ] 



JUNE TWENTIETH 

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our 

heads. 

If^alden. 

JUNE TWENTY-FIRST 

The present hour is always wealthiest when it 
is poorer than the future ones, as that is the 
pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest 

prospect. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

JUNE TWENTY-SECOND 

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend 
will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace 
his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other's 
hopes. They are kind to each other's dreams. 
A IVeek on the Concord Riuer. 

JUNE TWENTY-THIRD 

What avails it that you are Christian, if you are 
not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself 
no more, if you are not more religious ? I 
know of many systems of religion esteemed 
heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with 
shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, 
though it be to the performance of rites merely. 

IValden. 

[ 59 ] 



JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH 

In the night" the eyes are partly closed or retire 
into the head. Other senses take the lead. The 
walker is guided as well by the sense of smell. 

Excursions. 

JUNE TWENTY- FIFTH 

What exercise is to the body, employment is to 

the mind and morals. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

JUNE TWENTY-SIXTH 

But it is fit that the Past should be dark ; 
though the darkness is not so much a quality 
of the past as of tradition. It is not a distance 
of time, but a distance of relation, which makes 
thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the 
heart of this generation is fair and bright still. 

A JVeek on the Concord Ri-uer. 

JUNE TWENTY-SEVENTH 

We should impart our courage, and not our 

despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, 

and take care that this does not spread by 

contagion. 

IVaUen. 

JUNE TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Other seeds I have which will find other things 
in that corner of my garden, in like fashion, 
almost any fruit you wish, every year for ages, 
[ 60 J 



until the crop more than fills the whole garden. 
You have but little more to do, than throw up 
your cap for entertainment these American days. 
Perfect alchemists I keep, who can transmute 
substances without end ; and thus the corner of 
my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest. 

The Succession of Forest Trees. 

JUNE TWENTY-NINTH 

I shall be a benefactor if I conquer some realms 
from the night, if I report to the gazettes any- 
thing transpiring about us at that season worthy 
of their attention, — if I can show men that 
there is some beauty awake while they are 
asleep, — if I add to the domains of poetry. 

Night and Moonlight. 

JUNE THIRTIETH 

No man who acts from a sense of duty ever puts 

the lesser duty above the greater. No man has 

the desire and ability to work on high things, but 

he has also the ability to build himself a high 

staging. 

Letters to Various Persons. 



[ 6i ] 



JULY 



JULY FIRST 

ALL the world reposes in beauty to him who 
preserves equipoise in his life, and moves 
serenely on his path without secret violence ; as 
he who sails down a stream, he has only to steer, 
keeping his bark in the middle, and carry it 

round the falls. 

A Week on the Concord Ri^er. 

JULY SECOND 

It is never too late to give up our prejudices. 
No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, 

can be trusted without proof. 

Walden. 

JULY THIRD 

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. 

I have no patience towards 

Such conscientious cowards. 

Give me simple laboring folk, 

Who love their work. 

Whose virtue is a song 

To cheer God along. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

[ 63 ] 



JULY FOURTH 

To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet which 

I should not before have accepted. There were 

distinct patches of the color of a purple grape 

with the bloom rubbed off. But lirst and last 

the sea is of all colors. 

Cape Cod. 

JULY FIFTH 

Many men walk by day; few walk by night. 
It is a very different season. Take a July 
night, for instance. About ten o'clock, — when 
man is asleep, and day fairly forgotten, — 
the beauty of moonlight is seen over lonely 
pastures where cattle are silently feeding. On 
all sides novelties present themselves. Instead 
of the sun there are the moon and stars, in- 
stead of the wood-thrush there is the whip-poor- 
will, — instead of butterflies in the meadows, 
fire-flies, winged sparks of fire ! who would 

have believed it .'' 

Night and Moonlight. 

JULY SIXTH 

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give 
me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food 
and wine in abundance, and obsequious attend- 
ance, but sincerity and truth were not ; and I 
went away hungry from the inhospitable board. 

The hospitality was as cold as the ices. 

Walden. 

[ 64 ] 



JULY SEVENTH 

Bring a spray from the wood, or a crystal from 
the brook, and place it on your mantel, and 
your household ornaments will seem plebeian 
beside its nobler fashion and bearing. It will 
wave superior there, as if used to a more refined 
and polished circle. It has a salute and a 
response to all your enthusiasm and heroism. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 

JULY EIGHTH 

Poetry is so universally true and independent of 
experience, that it does not need any particular 
biography to illustrate it, but we refer it sooner 
or later to some Orpheus or Linus, and after 
ages to the genius of humanity, and the gods 

themselves. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

JULY NINTH 

I am alarmed when it happens that I have 

walked a mile into the woods bodily, without 

getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk "^^I'/v 

I would fain forget all my morning occupations 

and my obligations to society. 

Excursions. 

JULY TENTH 

But we had hardly got out of the streets of 
Bangor before I began to be exhilarated bv the 
sight of the wild fir and spruce-tops, and those 

[ 65 ] 



of other primitive evergreens, peering through 
the mist in the horizon. It was like the sight 
and odor of cake to a schoolboy. 

The Maine Woods. 

JULY ELEVENTH 

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, 
as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the 
woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and 
finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all 
claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing 
in his mind not only his first but his last fruits 

also. 

Walden. 

JULY TWELFTH 

Some youthful spring, perchance, still empties 
with tinkling music into the oldest river, even 
when it is falling into the sea, and we imagine 
that its music is distinguished by the river gods 
from the general lapse of the stream, and fUlls 
sweeter on their ears in proportion as it is nearer 

to the ocean. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

JULY THIRTEENTH 

There is, however, this consolation to the most 
way-worn traveler, upon the dustiest road, that 
the path his feet describe is so perfectly symboli- 
cal of human life, — now climbing the hills, now 
[ 66 ] 



descending into the vales. From the summits 

he beholds the heavens and the horizon, from the 

vales he looks up to the heights again. He is 

treading his old lessons still, and though he may 

be very weary and travel-worn, it is yet sincere 

experience. 

A Walk to Wachusett. 

JULY FOURTEENTH 

There is something singularly grand and impres- 
sive in the sound of a tree falling in a perfectly 
calm night like this, as if the agencies which 
overthrow it did not need to be excited, but 
worked with a subtle, deliberate, and conscious 
force, like a boa-constrictor, and more effectively 
then than even in a windy day. If there is any 
such difference, perhaps it is because trees with 
the dews of the night on them are heavier than 

by day. 

The Maine Woods. 

JULY FIFTEENTH 

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all 
to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. 

Walden. 

As we have said, Nature is a greater and more 
perfect art, the art of God ; though, referred to 
herself, she is genius, and there is a similarity 
between her operations and man's art even in 

[ 67 ] 



the details and trifles. When the overhanging 
pine drops into the water, by the sun and water, 
and the wind rubbing it against the shore, its 
boughs are worn into fantastic shapes, and white 
and smooth, as if turned in a lathe. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

JULY SIXTEENTH 

My " best " room, however, my withdrawing 
room, always ready for company, on whose car- 
pet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind 
my house. Thither in summer days, when 
distinguished guests came, I took them, and a 
priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the 

furniture and kept the things in order. 

WaUen. 

JULY SEVENTEENTH 

But there are spirits of a yet more liberal culture, 
to whom no simplicity is barren. There are 
not only stately pines, but fragile flowers, like 
the orchises, commonly described as too delicate 
for cultivation, which derive their nutriment from 
the crudest mass of peat. These remind us, that, 
not only for strength, but for beauty, the poet 
must, from time to time, travel the logger's path 
and the Indian's trail, to drink at some new and 
more bracing fountain of the Muses, far in the 

recesses of the wilderness. 

T/ie Maine ll'oods. 

[ 68 ] 



JULY EIGHTEENTH 

Be not simply good ; be good for something. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

JULY NINETEENTH 

It was a singular experience, that long acquaint- 
ance which I cultivated with beans, what with 
planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and thresh- 
ing, and picking over, and selling them, — the 
last was the hardest of all, — I might add eating, 
for I did taste. I was determined to know beans. 

Walden. 

JULY TWENTIETH 

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I 

am glad to find that Nature wears so well. The 

landscape is indeed something real, and solid, 

and sincere, and I have not put my foot through 

it yet. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

JULY TWENTY-FIRST 

1 went to the woods because I wished to live 

deliberately, to front only the essential facts of 

life, and see if I could not learn what it had 

to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover 

that I had not lived. 

Walden. 

[ 69 ] 



JULY TWENTY-SECOND 

Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in 
every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated. 
That sound commonly reminds us that we are 
growing rusty and antique in our employments 
and habits of thought. His philosophy comes 
down to a more recent time than ours. There 
is something suggested by it that is a newer testa- 
ment, — the gospel according to this moment. 

Excursions. 

JULY TWENTY-THIRD 

We had come away up here among the hills to 
learn the impartial and unbribable beneficence 
of Nature. Strawberries and melons grow as 
well in one man's garden as another's, and the 
sun lodges as kindly under his hill-side, — when 
we had imagined that she inclined rather to some 
few earnest and faithful souls whom we know. 
A Week on the Concord River. 

JULY TWENTY-FOURTH 

I was struck by this universal spiring upward 
of the forest evergreens. The tendency is to 
slender, spiring tops, while they are narrower 
below. Not only the spruce and fir, but even 
the arbor-vitfe and white-pine, unlike the soft, 
spreading second-growth, of which I saw none, 

[ 70] 



all spire upwards, lifting a dense spear-head of 
cones to the light and air, at any rate, while their 
branches straggle after as they may ; as Indians 
lift the ball over the heads of the crowd in their 
desperate game. In this they resemble grasses, 
as also palms somewhat. The hemlock is com- 
monly a tent-like pyramid from the ground to 

its summit. 

The Maine IVoods. 

JULY TWENTY-FIFTH 

Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings. 
Take your time, and set about some free labor. 

H^aUen. 



JULY TWENTY-SIXTH 

We often love to think now of the life of men 
on beaches, — at least in midsummer, when the 
weather is serene ; their sunny lives on the sand, 
amid the beach-grass and the bayberries, their 
companion a cow, their wealth a jag of drift- 
wood or a few beach-plums, and their music 
the surf and the peep of the beach-bird. 

Cape Cod. 

JULY TWENTY-SEVENTH 

We are as happy as the birds when our Good 
Genius permits us to pursue any outdoor work 

[ 71 ] 



without a sense of dissipation. Our pen-knife 

glitters in the sun ; our voice is echoed by yonder 

wood ; if an oar drops, we are fain to let it drop 

again. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'uer. 

JULY TWENTY-EIGHTH 

Who knows but if men constructed their dwell- 
ings with their own hands, and provided food for 
themselves and families simply and honestly 
enough, the poetic faculty would be universally 
developed, as birds universally sing when they 
/ \ /^ are so engaged ? But alas ! we do like cowbirds 

1 U 7 and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which 

w' other birds have built, and cheer no traveler with 
their chattering and unmusical notes. 

Walden. 

JULY TWENTY-NINTH 

Honest traveling is about as dirty work as you 
can do, and a man needs a pair of overalls for it. 

A Yankee in Canada. 

JULY THIRTIETH 

There is always room and occasion enough for 
a true book on any subject ; as there is room 
for more light the brightest day and more rays 
will not interfere with the first. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

[ 72 ] 



JULY THIRTY-FIRST 

It is remarkable that men do not sail the sea 
with more expectation. Nothing remarkable 
was ever accomplished in a prosaic mood. The 
heroes and discoverers have found true more 
than was previously believed, only when they 
were expecting and dreaming of something more 
than their contemporaries dreamed of, or even 
themselves discovered, that is, when they were 
in a frame of mind fitted to behold the truth. 

Cape Cod. 



[ 73 ] 



AUGUSl 



AUGUST FIRST 

'J\ yTORNING brings back the heroic ages. 
-*-^-*- I was as much affected by the faint hum 
of a mosquito making its invisible and unimag- 
inable tour through my apartment at earliest 
dawn, when I was sitting with door and win- 
dows open, as I could be by any trumpet that 
ever sang of fame. It was Homer's requiem ; 
itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing 
its own wrath and wanderings. There was 
something cosmical about it; a standing adver- 
tisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor 
and fertility of the world. 

IValden. 

AUGUST SECOND 

The only fruit which even much living yields 
seems to be often only some trivial success, — 
the ability to do some slight thing better. We 
make conquest only of husks and shells for the 
most part, — at least, apparently, — but some- 
times these are cinnamon and spices, you know. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

[ IS ] 



AUGUST THIRD 

So near along life's stream are the fountains of 
innocence and youth making fertile its sandy 
margin ; and the voyageur will do well to re- 
plenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated 

sources. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

AUGUST FOURTH 

It is true, I came as near as is possible to come 
to being a hunter and miss it, myself; and as 
it is, I think that I could spend a year in the 
woods, fishing and hunting, just enough to sus- 
tain myself, with satisfaction. This would be 
next to living like a philosopher on the fruits 
of the earth which you had raised, which also 

attracts me. 

The Maine Woods. 

AUGUST FIFTH 

Most men, even in this comparatively free 
country, through mere ignorance and mistake, 
are so occupied with the factitious cares and 
superfluously coarse labors of life, that its finer 
fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fin- 
gers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and 

tremble too much for that. 

Walden. 

[ 76 ] 



AUGUST SIXTH 

Early apples begin to be ripe about the first of 

August ; but I think that none of them are so 

good to eat as some to smell. One is worth 

more to scent your handkerchief with than any 

perfume which they sell in the shops. The 

fragrance of some fruits is not to be forgotten, 

along with that of flowers. 

mid Apples. 

AUGUST SEVENTH 

The very uprightness of the pines and maples 
asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of Nature. 
Our lives need the relief of such a back- 
ground, where the pine flourishes and the jay 
still screams. 

A fVeek on the Concord Rifer. 

AUGUST EIGHTH 

It is not every truth that recommends itself to 
the common sense. Nature has a place for the 
wild clematis as well as for the cabbage. Some 
expressions of truth are reminiscent, — others 
merely sensible^ as the phrase is, — others 
prophetic. 

Excursions. 

AUGUST NINTH 

For many years I was self-appointed inspector 
of snow storms and rain storms, and did my 
duty faithfully ; surveyor, if not of highways, 

[ 11 ] 



then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, 

keeping them open, and ravines bridged and 

passable at all seasons, where the public heel 

had testified to their utility. 

Walden. 

AUGUST TENTH 

If with fancy unfurled 

You leave your abode, 
You may go round the world 
By the Old Marlborough Road. 

The Old Marlborough Road. 

AUGUST ELEVENTH 

There are moments when all anxiety and stated 
toil are becalmed in the infinite leisure and re- 
pose of Nature. All laborers must have their 
nooning, and at this season of the day, we are 
all, more or less, Asiatics, and give over all 

work and reform. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

AUGUST TWELFTH 

The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is 

always danger that he may die, though the danger 

must be allowed to be less in proportion as he 

is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as 

many risks as he runs. 

Walden. 

[ 78 ] 



AUGUST THIRTEENTH 

When I detect a beauty in any of the recesses 
of Nature, I am reminded, by the serene and 
retired spirit in which it requires to be contem- 
plated, of the inexpressible privacy of a life, — 
how silent and unambitious it is. The beauty 
there is in mosses must be considered from the 
holiest, quietest nook. 

Excursions. 

AUGUST FOURTEENTH 

In summer we live out of doors, and have only 
impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and 
must wait commonly for the stillness and longer 
nights of autumn and wholly new life, which no 
man has lived ; that even this earth was made 
for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than 
men and women. 

A IVeek on the Concord River. 

AUGUST FIFTEENTH 

The cart before the horse is neither beautiful 
nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses 
with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, 
and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful 
housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a 
foundation : now, a taste for the beautiful is most 
cultivated out of doors, where there is no house 
and no housekeeper. 

Walden. 

[ 79 ] 



AUGUST SIXTEENTH 

Truly the stars were given for a consolation to 
man. We should not know but our life were 
fated to be always grovelling, but it is permitted 
to behold them, and surely they are deserving of 
a fair destiny. We see laws which never fail, 
of whose failure we never conceived ; and their 
lamps burn all the night, too, as well as all day, 
— so rich and lavish is that nature which can 
afford this superfluity of light. 

A Walk to Wachusett. 

AUGUST SEVENTEENTH 

The hero then will know how to wait, as well 

as to make haste. All good abides with him 

who waiteth wisely ; we shall sooner overtake 

the dawn by remaining here than by hurrying 

over the hills of the west. Be assured that 

every man's success is in proportion to his 

average ability. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

AUGUST EIGHTEENTH 

In autumn, even in August, the thoughtful days 

begin, and we can walk anywhere with profit. 

Beside, an outward cold and dreariness, which 

make it necessary to seek shelter at night, lend 

a spirit of adventure to a walk. 

Cape Cod. 

[ 80 ] 



AUGUST NINETEENTH 

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom 
on fruits, can be preserved only by the most 
delicate handling. Yet we do not treat our- 
selves nor one another thus tenderly. 

Walden. 

AUGUST TWENTIETH 

By the twentieth of August, everywhere in woods 
and swamps, we are reminded of the fall, both 
by the richly spotted Sarsaparilla-leaves and 
Brake.s, and the withering and blackened Skunk- 
Cabbage and Hellebore, and, by the river-side, 
the already blackening Pontederia. 

Autumnal Tints. 

AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST 

There have been heroes for whom this world 
seemed expressly prepared, as if creation had at 
last succeeded ; whose daily life was the stuff of 
which our dreams are made, and whose presence 
enhanced the beauty and ampleness of Nature 
herself. 

A Week on the Concord Ri<ver. 

AUGUST TWENTY-SECOND 

The words which express our faith and piety 
are not definite; yet they are significant and 
fragrant like frankincense to superior natures. 

Walden. 

[ 8i ] 



AUGUST TWENTY-THIRD 

I have met with but one or two persons in the 
course of my life who understood the art of 
Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had 
a genius, so to speak, for sauntering : which 
word is beautifully derived from " idle people 
who roved about the country, in the Middle 
Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of 
going a la Sainte Terre" to the Holy Land, 
till the children exclaimed, "^ There goes a 
Sainte-Terrer" a Saunterer, — a Holy-Lander. 

If^alking. 

AUGUST TWENTY-FOURTH 

The light-house lamps a few feet distant shone 

full into my chamber, and made it as bright as 

day, so I knew exactly how the Highland Light 

bore all that night, and I was in no danger of 

being wrecked. Unlike the last, this was as 

still as a summer night. 

Cape Cod. 

AUGUST TWENTY-FIFTH 

There is just as much beauty visible to us in the 
landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, — 
not a grain more. The actual objects which 
one man will see from a particular hill-top are 
just as different from those which another will 
see as the beholders are different. 

Autunmal Tints. 

[ 82 ] 



AUGUST TWENTY-SIXTH 

Why is it that the priest is never called to con- 
sult with the physician ? It is because men 
believe practically that matter is independent 
of spirit. But what is quackery ? It is com- 
monly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man 
by addressing his body alone. There is need of 
a physician who shall minister to both soul and 
body at once, that is, to man. Now he falls 

between two stools. 

Walden. 

AUGUST TWENTY-SEVENTH 

The poet will write for his peers alone. He 

will remember only that he saw truth and beauty 

from his position, and expect the time when a 

vision as broad shall overlook the same field as 

freely. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

AUGUST TWENTY-EIGHTH 

From my experience with wild apples, I can 

understand that there may be reason for a 

savage's preferring many kinds of food which 

the civilized man rejects. The former has 

the palate of an out-door man. It takes a 

savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit. 

What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to 

relish the apple of life, the apple of the world, 

then ! 

ff^ild Apples. 

[ 83 ] 



AUGUST TWENTY-NINTH 

The breakers looked like droves of a thousand 
wild horses of Neptune, rushing to the shore, 
with their white manes streaming far behind ; 
and when, at length, the sun shone for a mo- 
ment, their manes were rainbow-tinted. Also, 
the long kelp-weed was tossed up from time 
to time, like the tails of sea-cows sporting in 

the brine. 

Cape Cod. 

AUGUST THIRTIETH 

We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but 
Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with 

full authority. 

JValden. 

AUGUST THIRTY-FIRST 

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, 

As near the ocean's edge as I can go. 
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach. 

Sometimes I stay to let them overflow. 

My sole employment 't is, and scrupulous care. 
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides. 

Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare. 
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides. 

I have but few companions on the shore. 

They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea. 

Yet oft I think the ocean they 've sailed o'er 
Is deeper known upon the strand to me. 

[ 84 ] 



The middle sea contains no crimson dulse, 
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view. 

Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, 

And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew. 
A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 



[ 85 ] 



SEPTEMBER 



SEPTEMBER FIRST 

TF you would get exercise, go in search of the 

■^ springs of life. Think of a man's swinging 

dumb-bells for his health, when those springs 

are bubbling up in far-ofF pastures unsought by 

him ! 

Walking. 

SEPTEMBER SECOND 

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature, not 
his Father but his Mother stirs within him, and 
he becomes immortal with her immortality. From 
time to time she claims kindredship with us, and 
some globule from her veins steals up into our 

own. 

A IVeek on the Concord River. 

SEPTEMBER THIRD 

Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which 
presume to have exhausted the variety and the 
joys of life are as old as Adam. But man's 
capacities have never been measured ; nor are 
we to judge of what he can do by any prece- 
dents, so little has been tried. 

IValden. 

[ 87 ] 



SEPTEMBER FOURTH 

There are nights in this climate of such serene 
and majestic beauty, so medicinal and fertilizing 
to the spirit, that methinks a sensitive nature 
would not devote them to oblivion, and perhaps 
there is no man but would be better and wiser 
for spending them out of doors, though he should 
sleep all the next day to pay for it. 

Night and Moonlight. 

SEPTEMBER FIFTH 

In fact, the deeper you penetrate into the woods, 
the more intelligent, and, in one sense, less 
countrified do you find the inhabitants ; for al- 
ways the pioneer has been a traveler, and, to 
some extent, a man of the world ; and, as the 
distances with which he is familiar are greater, 
so is his information more general and far reach- 
ing than the villagers'. 

The Maine JVoods. 

SEPTEMBER SIXTH 

There is in my nature, methinks, a singular 
yearning toward all wildness. I know of no 
redeeming qualities in myself but a sincere love 
for some things, and when I am reproved I fall 
back on to this ground. 

A IVeek on the Concord Ri-ver, 

[ 88 ] 



SEPTEMBER SEVENTH 

Sailors making the land commonly steer either 
by the wind-mills or the meeting-houses. In 
the country, we are obliged to steer by the 
meeting-houses alone. Yet the meeting-house 
is a kind of wind-mill, which runs one day in 
seven, turned either by the winds of doctrine or 
public opinion, or more rarely by the winds of 
Heaven, where another sort of grist is ground, 
of which, if it be not all bran or musty, if it be 
not plaster^ we trust to make bread of life. 

Cape Cod. 

SEPTEMBER EIGHTH 

A great grief is but sympathy with the soul that 
disposes events and is as natural as the resin on 
Arabian trees. . . . The same everlasting seren- 
ity will appear in the face of God, and we will 
not be sorrowful if he is not. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

SEPTEMBER NINTH 

And now that we have returned to the desultory 
life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little 
of that mountain grandeur into it. We will 
remember within what walls we lie, and under- 
stand that this level life too has its summit, and 
why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys 

have a tinge of blue. 

A Walk to Wachusett. 

[ 89 ] 



SEPTEMBER TENTH 

Some tumultuous little rill, 

Purling round its storied pebble, 
Tinkling to the self-same tune. 
From September until June, 

Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble. 

Silent flows the parent stream, 

And if rocks do lie below. 
Smothers with her waves the din, 
As it were a youthful sin. 

Just as still, and just as slow. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 



SEPTEMBER ELEVENTH 

With the autumn begins in some measure a new 

spring. The plover is heard whistling high in 

the air over the dry pastures, the finches flit from 

tree to tree, the bobolinks and flickers fly in 

flocks, and the goldfinch rides on the earliest 

blast, like a winged hyla peeping amid the rustle 

of the leaves. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 



SEPTEMBER TWELFTH 

It is not worth the while to let our imperfections 
disturb us always. The conscience really does 
not, and ought not to, monopolize the whole of 

[ 90 ] 



our lives, any more than the heart or the head. 
It is as liable to disease as any other part. 

A Week on the Concord Ri<ver. 

SEPTEMBER THIRTEENTH 

Most persons visit the sea-side in warm weather, 
when fogs are frequent, and the atmosphere is 
wont to be thick, and the charm of the sea is to 
some extent lost. But I suspect that the fall is 
the best season, for then the atmosphere is more 
transparent, and it is a greater pleasure to look 
out over the sea. The clear and bracing air, 
and the storms of autumn and winter even, are 
necessary in order that we may get the impression 
which the sea is calculated to make. 

Cape Cod. 

SEPTEMBER FOURTEENTH 

For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature 
I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a 
world into which I make occasional and tran- 
sional and transient forays only, and my patriotism 
and allegiance to the State into whose territories 
I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. 

Walking. 

SEPTEMBER FIFTEENTH 

Happy we who can bask in this warm September 
sun, which illumes all creatures, as well when 
they rest as when they toil, not without a feeling 

[ 91 ] 



of gratitude ; whose life is as blameless, how 
blameworthy soever it may be, on the Lord's 
Mona-day as on his Suna-day. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

SEPTEMBER SIXTEENTH 

If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by 
truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, 
let us first be as simple and well as Nature our- 
selves, dispel the clouds which hang over our 
own brows, and take up a little life into our 

pores. 

IValden. 

SEPTEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

It is the living spirit of the tree, not its spirit of 
turpentine, with which I sympathize, and which 
heals my cuts. It is as immortal as I am, and 
perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to 

tower above me still. 

The Maine IVooJs. 

SEPTEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

Nature strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, 

and never collects them into heaps. This was 

the soil it grew in, and this the hour it bloomed 

in; if sun, wind, and rain came here to cherish 

and expand the flower, shall not we come here 

to pluck it ? 

A Week on the Concord River. 

[ 92 ] 



SEPTEMBER NINETEENTH 

No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with 'k 
him on his expeditions in a precious casket, A 
written word is the choicest of relics. It is 
something at once more intimate with us and 
more universal than any other work of art. It 
is the work of art nearest to life itself. 

Walden. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTIETH 

As the season advances, and those birds which 
make us but a passing visit depart, the woods 
become silent again, and but i^v^ feathers ruffle 
the drowsy air. But the solitary rambler may 
still find a response and expression for every 
mood in the depth of the wood. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, 
as perchance he is walking on a railroad, then in- 
deed the cars go by without his hearing them. 
But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes 

by and the cars return. 

Walking. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the 
ordinary sense. A perfect work of man's art 
would also be wild or natural in a good sense. 

[ 93 ] 



? 



Man tames Nature only that he may at last make 
her more free even than he found her, though he 
may never yet have succeeded. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

When formerly I was looking about to see what 
I could do for a living, some sad experience in 
conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh 
in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often 
and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely 
I could do, and its small profits might suffice, — 
for my greatest skill has been to want but little, 
— so little capital it required, so little distraction 
from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. 

Walden. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

As I love Nature, as I love singing birds, and 
gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning 
and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, 

my Friend. 

A Week on the Concord Rinjer. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

By the twenty-fifth of September, the Red 
Maples generally are beginning to be ripe. Some 
large ones have been conspicuously changing for 
a week, and some single trees are now very 
brilliant. I notice a small one, half a mile ofF 

[ 94 ] ^ 



across a meadow, against the green wood-side 
there, a far brighter red than the blossoms of 
any tree in summer, and more conspicuous. 

Autumnal Tints. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

The harvest moon had just risen, and its level 
rays began to light up the forest on our right, 
while we glided downward in the shade on the 
same side, against the little breeze that was 
stirring. The lofty, spiring tops of the spruce 
and fir were very black against the sky, and 
more distinct than by day, close bordering this 
broad avenue on each side ; and the beauty of 
the scene, as the moon rose above the forest, 
it would not be easy to describe. 

The Maine Woods. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as 
much as their lives. They will leave consolation 
to the mourners, as the rich leave money to de- 
fray the expenses of their funerals, and their 
memories will be incrusted over with sublime 
and pleasing thoughts, as their monuments are 
overgrown with moss. 

A Week on the Concord Ri<ver. 

[ 95 ] 



SEPTEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

When we have returned from the sea-side, we 

sometimes ask ourselves why we did not spend 

more time in gazing at the sea ; but very soon 

the traveler does not look at the sea more than 

at the heavens. 

Cape Cod. 

SEPTEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

I think that the change to some higher color in 
a leaf is an evidence that it has arrived at a late 
and perfect maturity, answering to the maturity 
of fruits. It is generally the lowest and oldest 
leaves which change first. But as the perfect 
winged and usually bright-colored insect is short- 
lived, so the leaves ripen but to fall. 

Autumnal Tints. 

SEPTEMBER THIRTIETH 

What is a course of history, or philosophy, or 
poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best 
society, or the most admirable routine of life, 
compared with the discipline of looking always 
at what is to be seen ? Will you be a reader, a 
student merely, or a seer ? Read your fate, see 
what is before you, and walk on into futurity. 

Walden. 



[ 96 ] 



OCTOBER 



OCTOBER FIRST 

AM astonished at the singular pertinacity 
and endurance of our lives. The miracle is, 
that what is /V, when it is so difficult, if not irrj- 
possible, for anything else to be; that we walk 
on in our particular paths so far, before wc fall 
on death and fate, merely because we must walk 
in some path ; that every man can get a living, 
and so few can do any more. So much only 
can I accomplish ere health and strength are 
gone, and yet this suffices. 

A Week on the Concord Ri-ver. 



OCTOBER SECOND 

But of much more importance than a knowledge 
of the names and distinctions of color is the joy 
and exhilaration which these colored leaves excite. 
Already these brilliant trees throughout the street, 
without any more variety, are at least equal to an 
annual festival and holiday, or a week of such. 

Autumnal 'Tints. 



[ 97 ] 



OCTOBER THIRD 

The true man of science will know Nature better 
by his finer organization ; he will smell, taste, 
see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will 
be a deeper and finer experience. We do not 
learn by inference and deduction, and the appli- 
cation of mathematics to philosophy, but by 
direct intercourse and sympathy. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 

OCTOBER FOURTH 

The tops of mountains are among the unfinished 
parts of the globe, whither it is a slight insult to 
the gods to climb and pry into their secrets, and 
try their effect on our humanity. Only daring 
and insolent men, perchance, go there. Simple 
races, as savages, do not climb mountains, — 
their tops are sacred and mysterious tracts never 
visited by them. Pomola is always angry with 
those who climb to the summit of Ktaadn. 

The Maine IVoods. 

OCTOBER FIFTH 

Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, 

but for resolves to draw breath in. We do not 

directly go about the execution of the purpose 

that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and 

ramble with prepared mind, as if the half were 

already done. 

A JVeek on the Concord Ri-ver. 

[ 98 ] 



OCTOBER SIXTH 

Now, too, the first of October, or later, the Elms 
are at the height of their autumnal beauty, great 
brownish-yellow masses, warm from their Sep- 
tember oven, hanging over the highway. Their 
leaves are perfectly ripe. I wonder if there is 
any answering ripeness in the lives of the men 

who live beneath them. 

Autumnal Tints. 

OCTOBER SEVENTH 

This life is not for complaint, but for satisfaction. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

OCTOBER EIGHTH 

The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts 

its way into the secret of things. 

IValden. 

OCTOBER NINTH 

Every wild-apple shrub excites our expectation 
thus, somewhat as every wild child. It is, per- 
haps, a prince in disguise. What a lesson to 
man ! So are human beings, referred to the 
highest standard, the celestial fruit which they 
suggest and aspire to bear, browsed on by fate ; 
and only the most persistent and strongest genius 
defends itself and prevails, sends a tender scion 
upward at last, and drops its perfect fruit on the 
ungrateful earth. Poets and philosophers and 

[ 99 ] 



/ 



2- 



statesmen thus spring up in the country pastures, 
and outlast the hosts of unoriginal men. 

Wild Apples. 

OCTOBER TENTH 

Columbus felt the westward tendency more 
strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and 
found a New World for Castile and Leon. The 
herd of men in those days scented fresh pastures 

from afar. 

Walking. 

OCTOBER ELEVENTH 

The child should have the advantage of ignorance 
as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he 
gets his share of neglect and exposure. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

OCTOBER TWELFTH 

Individuals, like nations, must have suitable 
broad and natural boundaries, even a consider- 
able neutral ground, between them. I have 
found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond 

to a companion on the opposite side. 

Walden. 

OCTOBER THIRTEENTH 

Look at yonder swamp of Maples mixed with 
Pines, at the base of a Pine-clad hill, a quarter 
of a mile off, so that you get the full effect of 

[ 100 ] 



the bright colors, without detecting the imper- 
fections of the leaves, and see their yellow, 
scarlet, and crimson lires, of all tints, mingled 
and contrasted with the green. 

Autumnal Tints. 



OCTOBER FOURTEENTH 

The late walker or sailor, in the October even- 
ings, may hear the murmurings of the snipe, 
circling over the meadows, the most spirit-like 
sound in Nature ; and still later in the autumn, 
when the frosts have tinged the leaves, a solitary 
loon pays a visit to our retired ponds, where he 
may lurk undisturbed till the season of moulting 
is passed, making the woods ring with his wild 

laughter. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 



OCTOBER FIFTEENTH 

For this is the secret of successful sauntering. 
He who sits still in a house all the time may be 
the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, 
in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the 
meandering river, which is all the while sedulously 
seeking the shortest course to the sea. 

fValking. 



[ lOI ] 



OCTOBER SIXTEENTH 

In the hues of October sunsets, we see the 
portals to other mansions than those which we 
occupy, not far off geographically. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH 

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, 
whether clothes or friends. Turn the old ; re- 
turn to them. Things do not change ; we change. 
Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God 
will see that you do not want society. If I were 
confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like 
a spider, the world would be just as large to me 

while I had my thoughts about me. 

IValden. 



OCTOBER EIGHTEENTH 

Cape Cod is the bared and bended arm of Massa- 
chusetts : the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay ; the 
elbow, or crazy-bone, at Cape Mallebarre ; the 
wrist at Truro ; and the sandy fist at Province- 
town, — behind which the State stands on her 
guard, with her back to the Green Mountains, 
and her feet planted on the floor of the ocean, 
like an athlete protecting her Bay, — boxing 
with northeast storms, and, ever and anon, heav- 
ing up her Atlantic adversary from the lap of 
[ 102 ] 



earth, — ready to thrust forward her other fist, 

which keeps guard the while upon her breast at 

Cape Ann. 

Cape Cod. 

OCTOBER NINETEENTH 

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from 
the restless class of Reformers. What if these 
grievances exist ? So do you and I. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

OCTOBER TWENTIETH 

How beautiful, when a whole tree is like one great 
scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from 
lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially 
if you look toward the sun ! What more re- 
markable object can there be in the landscape ? 
Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. If 
such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would 
be handed down by tradition to posterity, and 

get into the mythology at last. 

Autumnal Tints. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-FIRST 

The works of the great poets have never yet 

been read by mankind, for only great poets can 

read them. They have only been read as the 

multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, 

not astronomically. 

Walden. 

[ 103 ] 



y 



OCTOBER TWENTY-SECOND 

One who pressed forward incessantly and never 
rested from his labors, who grew fast and made 
infinite demands on life, would always find him- 
self in a new country or wilderness, and sur- 
rounded by the raw material of life. He would 
be climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive 

forest-trees. 

Walking. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-THIRD 

I do not see what the Puritans did at this season, 
when the Maples blaze out in scarlet. They 
certainly could not have worshiped in groves 
then. Perhaps that is what they built meeting- 
houses and fenced them round with horsesheds 

for. 

Autumnal Tints. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

The New Testament is remarkable for its pure 
morality ; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for 
its pure intellectuality. 

A Week on the Concord Rl-ver. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-FH^TH 

To a philosopher all nezvs.^ as it is called, is 

gossip, and they who edit and read it are old 

women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy 

after this gossip. 

Walden. 

[ ^04 ] 



OCTOBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

By the twenty-sixth of October the large Scarlet 

Oaks are in their prime, when other Oaks are 

usually withered. They have been kindling their 

fires for a week past, and now generally burst 

into a blaze. 

Autumnal Thits. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

It was worth the while to lie down in a country 

where you could afford such great fires ; that 

was one whole side, and the bright side of our 

world. 

The Maine Woods. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

We are sometimes made aware of a kindness 
long passed, and realize that there have been 
times when our friends' thoughts of us were 
of so pure and lofty a character that they 
passed over us like the winds of heaven un- 
noticed ; when they treated us not as what we 
were, but as what we aspired to be. 

A Week on the Concord Rinjer. 

OCTOBER TWENTY-NINTH 

Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry 
convenience, as they have learned to cipher in 
order to keep accounts and not be cheated in 

[ 105 J 



trade ; but of reading as a noble intellectual 

exercise they know little or nothing. 

IValden. 

OCTOBER THIRTIETH 

October is the month for painted leaves. Their 
rich glow now flashes round the world. As 
fruits and leaves and the day itself acquire a 
bright tint just before they fall, so the year 

/ near its setting. October is its sunset sky ; 

November the later twilight. 

Autumnal Tints. 

OCTOBER THIRTY-FIRST 
I am the autumnal sun, 
With autumn gales my race is run ; 
When will the hazel put forth its flowers, 
Or the grape ripen under my bowers ? 
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon. 
Turn my midnight into mid-noon ? 

I am all sere and yellow. 

And to my core mellow. 
The mast is dropping within my woods. 
The winter is lurking within my moods. 
And the rustling of the withered leaf 
Is the constant music of my grief. 

A Week on the Concord River. 



[ io6 ] 



NOVEMBER 



NOVEMBER FIRST 

TT is not enough that we are truthful ; we 

"*■ must cherish and carry out high purposes to 

be truthful about. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

NOVEMBER SECOND 

It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these 
fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beauti- 
fully they go to their graves ! how gently lay 
themselves down and turn to mould ! — painted 
of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of 
us living. So they troop to their last resting- 
place, light and frisky. 

Autumnal Tints. 

NOVEMBER THIRD 

There is a peculiar interest belonging to the still 
later flowers, which abide with us the approach 
of winter. There is somethino- witch-like in the 

to 

appearance of the witch-hazel, which blossoms 
late in October and in November, with its irregu- 
lar and angular spray and petals like furies' hair, 
or small ribbon streamers. 

A IVeek on the Concord Riiier. 

[ 107 ] 



NOVEMBER FOURTH 

Standing quite alone, far in the forest, while the 

wind is shaking down snow from the trees, and 

leaving the only human tracks behind us, we 

find our reflections of a richer variety than the 

life of cities. 

A Winter Walk. 

NOVEMBER FIFTH 

Hardly a man takes a half hour's nap after 
dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his 
head and asks, " What 's the news ? " as if the 
rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some 
give directions to be waked every half hour, 
doubtless for no other purpose ; and then, to 
pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. 

Walden, 

NOVEMBER SIXTH 

A mountain-chain determines many things for 
the statesman and philosopher. The improve- 
ments of civilization rather creep along its sides 
than cross its summit. How often is it a 
barrier to prejudice and fanaticism ? 

A Walk to Wachusett. 

NOVEMBER SEVENTH 

Look up at the tree-tops and see how finely 
Nature finishes off her work there. See how 
the pines spire without end higher and higher, 
[ io8 ] 



and make a graceful fringe to the earth. And 
who shall count the finer cobwebs that soar and 
float away from their utmost tops, and the 
myriad insects that dodge between them. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

NOVEMBER EIGHTH 

The Jesuit missionaries used to say, that, in 
their journeys with the Indians in Canada, they 
lay on a bed which had never been shaken up 
since the creation, unless by earthquakes. 

The Maine Woods. 

NOVEMBER NINTH 

A queen might be proud to walk where these 
gallant trees have spread their bright cloaks in 
the mud. I see wagons roll over them as a 
shadow or a reflection, and the drivers heed them 
just as little as they did their shadows before. 

Autumnal Tints. 

NOVEMBER TENTH 

What we call knowledge is often our positive 
ignorance ; ignorance our negative knowledge. 

Walking. 

NOVEMBER ELEVENTH 

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all 
dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to 
our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as 

[ 109 ] 



after disappointment ; that background which the 
painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, 
and which, however awkw-ard a figure he may 
have made in the foreground, remains ever our 
inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, 
no personality disturb us. 

A Week on the Concord Rinjer. 

NOVEMBER TWELFTH 

All health and success does me good, however 

far off and withdrawn it may appear ; all disease 

and failure helps to make me sad and does me 

evil, however much sympathy it may have with 

me or I with it. 

JValden. 

NOVEMBER THIRTEENTH 

All apples are good in November. Those which 
the farmer leaves out as unsalable, and unpalat- 
able to those who frequent the markets, are 
choicest fruit to the walker. But it is remark- 
able that the wild apple, which I praise as so 
spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or 
woods, being brought into the house, has fre- 
quently a harsh and crabbed taste. 

JVild Apples. 

NOVEMBER FOURTEENTH 

Most go in and shut their doors, thinking that 
bleak and colorless November has already come, 

[ iio ] 



when some of the most brilliant and memorable 

colors are not yet lit. 

Autumnal Taints. 

NOVEMBER FIFTEENTH 

A town is saved, not more by the righteous men 
in it than by the woods and swamps that sur- 
round it. A township where one primitive 
forest waves above, while another primitive forest 
rots below, — such a town is fitted to raise not 
only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers 
for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer 
and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a 
wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts 

and wild honey. 

Walking. 

o 

NOVEMBER SIXTEENTH 

Read the best books first, or you may not have 
a chance to read them at all. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

NOVEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird, 
Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight. 
Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, 
Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; 
Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form 
Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; 

[ i^i ] 



By night star-veiling, and by day 
Darkening the light and blotting out the sun ; 
Go thou my incense upward from this hearth, 
And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. 

JValden. 

NOVEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

I think that I may venture to say that every 
white-pine cone that falls to the earth naturally 
in this town, before opening and losing its seeds, 
and almost every pitch-pine one that falls at all, 
is cut off by a squirrel, and they begin to pluck 
them long before they are ripe, so that when 
the crop of white-pine cones is a small one, 
as it commonly is, they cut off thus almost 
every one of these before it fairly ripens. 

The Succession of Forest Trees. 

NOVEMBER NINETEENTH 

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with 

the desire to go to a West as distant and as fair 

as that into which the sun goes down. He 

appears to migrate westward daily, and tempt 

us to follow him. He is a Great Western 

Pioneer whom the nations follow. 

JValking. 

NOVEMBER TWENTIETH 

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is ex- 
tremely rare. For the most part we miss the 
hue and fragrance of the thought ; as if we could 

[ ^12 J 



be satisfied with the dews of the morning or 
evening without their colors, or the heavens with- 
out their azure. The most attractive sentences 
are, perhaps, not the wisest, but the surest and 

roundest. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'-ver. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

I believe that men are generally still a little 

afraid of the dark, though the witches are all 

hung, and Christianity and candles have been 

introduced. 

Walden. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

The civilized man not only clears the land per- 
manently to a great extent, and cultivates open 
fields, but he tarnes and cultivates to a certain 
extent the forest itself. By his mere presence, 
almost, he changes the nature of the trees as no 
other creature does. 

The Maine Woods. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

Let us see if we cannot stay here where He hns 
put us, on his own conditions. Does not his 
law reach as far as his light ? The expedients 
of the nations clash with one another, only the 
absolutely right is expedient for all. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

[ 1^3 ] 



NOVEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally 
and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. 
They have no cause of their own to plead, but 
while they enlighten and sustain the reader his 
common sense will not refuse them. Their 
authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy 
in every society, and, more than kings or em- 
perors, exert an influence on mankind. 

ITalden, 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that 
our thoughts will be clearer, fresher, and more 
ethereal, as our sky, — our understanding more 
comprehensive and broader, like our plains, — 
our intellect generally on a grander scale, like our 
thunder and lightning, our rivers and mountains 
and forests, — and our hearts shall even corre- 
spond in breadth and depth and grandeur to our 

inland seas. 

Walking. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

Occasionally, when threading the woods in the 
fall, you will hear a sound as if some one had 
broken a twig, and, looking up, see a jay peck- 
ing at an acorn, or you will see a flock of them 
at once about it, in the top of an oak, and hear 

them break them ofF. 

The Succession of Forest Trees. 

[ 114 ] 



o 



NOVEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

How many a man has dated a new era in his 

life from the reading of a book, 

Walden. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

We do not wish for Friends to feed and clothe 
our bodies, — neighbors are kind enough for 
that, — but to do the like office to our spirits. 
For this few are rich enough, however well 
disposed they may be. 

A IVeek on the Concord River. 

NOVEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

Though winter is represented in the almanac 
as an old man, facing the wind and sleet, and 
drawing his cloak about him, we rather think 
of him as a merry wood-chopper, and warm- 
blooded youth, as blithe as summer. 

A mnter IValk. 

NOVEMBER THIRTIETH 

We know not yet what we have done, still 

less what we are doing. Wait till evening, 

and other parts of our day's work will shine than 

we had thought at noon, and we shall discover 

the real purport of our toil. As when the farmer 

has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, 

he can best tell where the pressed earth shines 

most. 

A Week on the Cottcord Ri'ver. 

[ 115 ] 



DECEMBER 



DECEMBER FIRST Jy^Jy^-J j/ ^ fl/tf/ Qjp .. >- 

THE unconsciousness of man is the con- 
sciousness of God. 
Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even 
stone walls have their foundation below the frost. 
A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

DECEMBER SECOND 

But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As 
long as possible live free and uncommitted. It 
makes but little difference whether you are com- 
mitted to a farm or the county jail. 



IValden. 



DECEMBER THIRD 

Out on the silent pond straightway 

The restless ice doth crack. 
And pond sprites merry gambols play 

Amid the deafening rack. 

Eager I hasten to the vale. 
As if I heard brave news. 

How Nature held high festival, 
Which it were hard to lose. 

[ 117 ] 



Excursions. 



DECEMBER FOURTH 

What a coarse and imperfect use Indians and 
hunters make of Nature ! No wonder that their 
race is so soon exterminated. I already, and for 
weeks afterward, felt my nature the coarser for 
this part of my woodland experience, and was 
reminded that our life should be lived as ten- 
derly and daintily as one would pluck a flower. 

The Maine IVoods. 



DECEMBER FIFTH 

Here is no apology for neglecting to do many 

things from a sense of our incapacity, — for 

what deed does not fall maimed and imperfect 

from our hands ? — but only a warning to bungle 

less. 

A Week on the Concord Ri-ver. 



DECEMBER SIXTH 

The bottom of the sea is strewn with anchors, 
some deeper and some shallower, and alternately 
covered and uncovered by the sand, perchance 
with a small length of iron cable still attached, — 
to which where is the other end ? So many un- 
concluded tales to be continued another time. 

Cape Cod. 



[ ii8 ] 



DECEMBER SEVENTH 

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness 

to us. Only that day dawns to which we are 

awake. There is more day to dawn. The 

sun is but a morning star. 

JValden. 

DECEMBER EIGHTH 

Sometimes our fate grows too homely and famil- 
iarly serious ever to be cruel. Consider how 
for three months the human destiny is wrapped 

in furs. 

A Week on the Concord Ri'ver. 

DECEMBER NINTH 

Talk of burning your smoke after the wood has 
been consumed ! There is a far more impor- 
tant and warming heat, commonly lost, which 
precedes the burning of the wood. It is the 
smoke of industry, which is incense. 

Letters to Various Persons. 

DECEMBER TENTH 

No man ever stood the lower in my estimation 
for having a patch in his clothes ; yet I am sure 
that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have 
fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched, 
clothes than to have a sound conscience. 

il^ Walden. 

[ 119 1 



7 



DECEMBER ELEVENTH 

Some minds are as little logical or argumentative 
as Nature; they can offer no reason or ''guess," 
but they exhibit the solemn and incontrovertible 
fact. If a historical question arises, they cause 
the tombs to be opened. 

A JFeek on the Concord River. 

DECEMBER TWELFTH 

1 must walk toward Oregon, and not toward 

Europe. And that way the nation is moving, 

and I may say that mankind progress from east 

to west. 

Excursions. 

DECEMBER THIRTEENTH 

Likewise we look in vain, east or west over the 
earth, to find the perfect man ; but each repre- 
sents only some particular excellence. 

The Landlord. 

DECEMBER FOURTEENTH 
^ I learned this, at least, by my experiment : that 

if one advances confidently in the direction or 
his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which 
he has imagined, he will meet with a success un- 
expected in common hours. He will put some 
things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; 
new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin 
to establish themselves around and within him; 

[ 120 ] 



or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in 
his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live 
with the license of a higher order of beings. 

Walden. 

DECEMBER FIFTEENTH 

Talk of mysteries ! — Think of our life in Nature, 

— daily to be shown matter, to come in contact 

with it, — ^ rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! 

the solid earth ! the actual world ! the common 

sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where 

are we ? 

^ ""^ rhe Maine Woods. 

DECEMBER SIXTEENTH 

Some poems are for holidays only. They are 
polished and sweet, but it is the sweetness of 
sugar, and not such as toil gives to sour bread. 
The breath with which the poet utters his verse 
must be that by which he lives. 

A Week on the Concord Riuer. 

DECEMBER SEVENTEENTH 

To him who contemplates a trait of natural 
beauty no harm nor disappointment can come. 
The doctrines of despair, of spiritual or political 
tyranny or servitude, were never taught by such 
as shared the serenity of Nature. Surely good 
courage will not flag here on the Atlantic border, 
as long as we are flanked by the Fur Countries. 

[ 121 ] 



1f'^:x 



There is enough in that sound to cheer one under 
any circumstances. The spruce, the hemlock, 
and the pine will not countenance despair. 

Massachusetts Natural History. 

DECEMBER EIGHTEENTH 

Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most 

need, though it be your example which leaves 

them far behind. If you give money, spend 

yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it 

to them. 

tValden, 

DECEMBER NINETEENTH 

A truly good book is something as natural, and 
as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and per- 
fect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies 
of the West or in the jungles of the East. 

Excursions. 

DECEMBER TWENTIETH 

Who would neglect the least celestial sound, 
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground, 
If he could know it one day would be found 
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound. 
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round? 
A IVeek on the Concord River. 

[ 122 ] 



DECEMBER TWENTY-FIRST 

Up goes the smoke as silently and naturally as 
the vapor exhales from the leaves, and as busy 
disposing itself in wreathes as the housewife on 
the hearth below. It is a hieroglyphic of man's 
life, and suggests more intimate and important 
things than the boiling of a pot. 

A Winter Walk. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-SECOND 

This further experience also I gained. I said to 
myself, I will not plant beans and corn with so 
much industry another summer, but such seeds, 
if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, sim- 
plicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if 
they will not grow in this soil, even with less 
toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely 
it has not been exhausted for these crops. 

Walden. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-THIRD 

It would really be no small advantage if every 
college were thus located at the base of a moun- 
tain, as good at least as one well-endowed pro- 
fessorship. It were as well to be educated in 
the shadow of a mountain as in more classical 

shades. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

[ 123 ] 



DECEMBER TWENTY-FOURTH 

If you would feel the full force of a tempest, take 
up your residence on the top of Mount Wash- 
ington, or at the Highland Light, in Truro. 

Cape Cod. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-FIFTH 

Our life without love is like coke and ashes. 
Men may be pure as alabaster and Parian marble, 
elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, 
and yet if there is no milk mingled with the 
wine at their entertainments, better is the hos- 
pitality of Goths and Vandals. 

A Week on the Concord River. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-SIXTH 

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, 

I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, 

and notch it on my stick, too ; to stand on the 

meeting of two eternities, the past and future, 

which is precisely the present moment ; to toe 

that line. 

iralden. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-SEVENTH 

But through all this dreariness we seemed to 

have a pure and unqualified strain of eternal 

melody, for always the same strain which is a 

dirge to one household is a morning song of 

rejoicing to another. 

Cape Cod. 

[ 124 ] 



DECEMBER TWENTY-EIGHTH 

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even 
the walkers, nowadays, who undertake no per- 
severing, never-ending enterprises. Our expe- 
ditions are but tours, and come round again at 
evening to the old hearth-side from which we 
set out. Half the walk is but retracing our 

steps. -^__,..-^ y^ V 

Excursions. 

DECEMBER TWENTY-NINTH 

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as 
intangible and indescribable as the tints of morn- 
ing or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a 
segrtient of the rainbow which 1 have clutched. 

IValden. 

DECEMBER THIRTIETH 

Why should not we, who have renounced the 
king's authority, have our national preserves, 
where no villages need be destroyed, in which 
the bear and panther, and some even of the 
hunter race, may still exist, and not be "civil- 
ized ofF the face of the earth," — our forests, 
not to hold the king's game merely, but to hold 
and preserve the king himself also, the lord of 
creation, — not for idle sport or food, but for 
inspiration and our own true recreation ? or shall 
we, like villains, grub them all up, poaching on 

our own national domains ? 

The Maine Woods. 

[ 125 ] 



DECEMBER THIRTY-FIRST 

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one 
day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever 
he has done, shall perchance shine into our 
minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives 
with a great awakening light, as warm and serene 
and golden as on a bank-side in autumn. 

Excursions. 



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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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